Hello Group. My name is KD, and as much as I tried, I just couldn't stay off the Cowboys kool-aid this season. I know, I know, the past gave me no reason to think this would, or even could be any different, but I guess I'm just not built for that. They say the first step in recovery is admitting that you have a problem, so I'll just come out and say it.
When it comes to predicting accomplishments for the Dallas Cowboys, I'm a homer. I'm a Cowboyholic.
Wait for it, wait for it....
And I'm damn proud of it.
Look, I'm a Cowboys fan. I'm objective in my analysis of the team's performance day in and day out but optimism will always rule my view of the unknown. I'd rather prepare for the worst and hope for the best than prepare for the worst and look forward to being the "I told you so" guy.
I know I'm addicted to the team. My absence from blogging this week has had to do with being under the weather, and the fact that my doctor refuses to concede that Elongated Post Season Withdrawal is the most likely cause for my malaise. EPSW, it's real y'all.
At the beginning of the season, I implored my fellow front page writers to pencil themselves into a corner and go on record regarding how they envisioned the Cowboys season playing out. A couple were smart and abstained, but Tom and O.C.C. bit the bullet and traveled down the dark road with me. Being the resident Fantasy Football and prognostication guy, I also made some predictions about whether or not certain Cowboys would reach specific statistical goals. Let's just say that this wasn't a banner year for me prediction wise.
Follow the jump to see what I got right and wrong, mostly wrong.
On Tuesday this week, we looked at how NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock ranked the top five players per position in this year's draft.
Rankings like that always lead to interesting questions about positional value. Is a tackle more valuable than a corner or a pass rusher? Is the second best defensive end a better pick than the top-rated guard? A lot of this will of course depend on the individual player grades, but assuming two players have the exact same grade and also meet an equally big need, which player do you pick?
These are tricky questions to consider as you build your draft board or engage in a mock draft exercise. One way to approach the question is to look at the history of when the top players at each position were picked in previous drafts - and that's exactly what we'll do after the jump.
I don't know if it is because I now look for things I can write about concerning the Dallas Cowboys, but I had never noticed before how much was going on during the week of the Senior Bowl. Here are some brief items that caught my eye this week.
First, a clarification from an earlier post of mine. I wrote about the offseason conditioning and training for the team. At the time, I put in this information about what the players could do outside of the OTA and minicamps, based on what I thought were the rules under the CBA.
But the players are not allowed to workout at the team facility or work with the S&C coaches if they pass the "exit" physical at the end of the season. If they do not pass it, they are allowed to continue in a rehab program at the team facility under team supervision.
Our resident football insider Birddog26 has provided some clarification of the rules. It turns out that under the CBA all the players can use the team facilities, they just cannot work with any coaches or trainers. That sounds to me like a situation that is ripe for some cheating, since the facilities they can use include the video facilities as well as the weight and training areas. Can you imagine Tony in there looking at video of coverages, and Jason walking by and not getting into a little "casual" conversation about it? But that's just me. Anyway, I wanted to make sure that the information going out was as current and correct as we can make it.
But wait, there's more! Just pay additional shipping and handling, and follow past the jump.
The Cowboys, like every other NFL team, use the time they spend at the Senior Bowl not just to look at practices, but also to speak with players. Many of these interviews take place away from the prying eyes of nosy reporters, and we never hear about them. But some of the interviews do make their way into the public record, and we draftniks take meticulous note of every real, purported or imagined interview.
After all, four players who attended last year's Senior Bowl are currently on the Cowboys roster: running back DeMarco Murray, offensive lineman Kevin Kowalski, wide receiver Dwayne Harris and kicker Kai Forbath all made their way to Mobile, Alabama last year. Chances are that some of the players the Cowboys have taken an interest in will wear the Star next season.
After a thorough search of the interwebs, we have the names of twelve players we are fairly sure the Cowboys talked to, and three more names the Cowboys may or may not have talked to. All will be revealed after the break.
Dallas Cowboys owner/GM Jerry Jones is glad to have some money to spend in free agency - and he plans to spend all of it, based on what he has been saying in Mobile, Alabama during Senior Bowl week. Since I have already put forth my own idea of what the draft priorities for the Cowboys should be, I thought I might take a run at setting some similar criteria for Jerry to go out and spend that cap money. I may have occasional trouble having enough money at the end of the month, but figuring out how to spend the $20 million Dallas is believed to have for a free agent budget should be a piece of cake, right?
I'm not looking here to figure out how much the team is likely to spend for a given free agent. I am going to try to figure out what positions the team should be going after, and a few different strategies to get them. And I am going to throw out some names that I think the team might want to go for in a sort of mock free agency signing. It's going to be a bit fast and loose because of the unknowns of what any given player might cost, but hey, it isn't my money.
I'm going to use WalterFootball's list of available free agents for relative value of the players. I am not saying that they are right in the way they rank them, but just using this as a reference point the way OCC used CBSSports' draft rankings in his Mock Draft Challenge.
My ideas after the jump.
Carl Nicks, Calais Campbell, Cortland Finnegan, Chris Myers, Cliff Avril.
All are big name free agents, and the fact that their first names all start with a "C" augurs well for the Cowboys, but is entirely coincidental. All have been linked to the Cowboys, often and repeatedly. And if the most recent Cowboys history is anything to go by, none of them are going to play for the Cowboys next season.
Last year, the Cowboys brought in free agents Abram Elam and Kenyon Coleman. The year before, they weren't active in free agency at all, and three years ago the free agent crop consisted of Keith Brooking, Gerald Sensabaugh and Igor Olshansky.
What all the free agent acquisitions over the last three years have in common was that none of them were what could be described as the cream of the crop of their free agency class.
Another Wednesday has rolled around, so it's once again time for the weekly foray into the FanPost forest. In the last seven days, BTBers have rolled out a formidable array of F-Posts; the vast majority of these tend to focus upon a topic that is, at present, near and dear to Cowboys fans: what can be done to improve a team that has a lot of apparent holes on its roster? With so many holes, you can imagine all the possible solutions: enough to make Ol' Rabble's graying head spin. One thing I found out this week is that its hard to write posts when one's head is spinning...
Before we get to some of my favorite sets of solutions for what ails out beloved 'Boys, I want to recognize a couple of guys whose FPs offer some important groundwork for the posts to come. The first of these is our resident football ringer, Birddog26 (you may remember his San Antonio training camp reports late last summer). 'Dog is a scout private defensive back coach (did I get that right, BD?), who understands the nuances of scouting. In his post, he shares these with us, his fellow Cowboys fans. As we head into Free Agency and the NFL Draft, we'll hear a lot of scouting lingo. Wanna get clearer on what the Mike Mayocks of the world are talking about? Read Birddog26's fine post. Now.
I think one of the guys we all wish would read 'Dog's post is Jerry Jones, the scouting wannabe who has made a bit of a spectacle of himself this week at the Senior Bowl. First, he held court with local reporters for about 25 minutes and, amidst the almost endless series of hesitations, mid-sentence corrections and non-sequiturs that is his rhetorical style, seemed to suggest that he'd rather have Eli Manning than Tony Romo (he didn't, clear-headed commentators soon affirmed). Then, in an interview on NFL Network, he opined on last year's draft haul. This time around, he actually offered some good info--if his speechification might be parsed. Thankfully, one of our A-list members, Rohpuri, has done just that. He accomplishes the amazing feat of making Jones's rambling read intelligibly. For that, he earns my deepest respect.
Read about this week's top FanPosts after the jump...
Two weeks ago, Jon Kitna informed the Dallas Cowboys that he was going to retire. Kitna had been suffering from lingering back issues and had been inactive since week 11.
In a sign that the Cowboys may not be entirely comfortable with Stephen McGee as their No. 2 quarterback, the Cowboys waited until week 15 to put Kitna on IR. Additionally, they put in a waiver claim for Kyle Orton immediately after the week 11 game. ESPNDallas reported at the time that the Cowboys were willing to pay Orton roughly $2.6 million to be the backup for the final six games.
It's probably a fair assumption that the Cowboys will once again be looking for a veteran quarterback this offseason as the number two guy to back up Tony Romo next year.
The Cowboys could easily end up going after Kyle Orton again. Orton will probably not get a starting job in the league at this point, yet as measured by his 2011 passer rating, he's still within the top 25 QBs in the league. But there are other options available as well, and after the break we'll take a brief look at a number of veteran quarterbacks who are unrestricted free agents.
